


Sad Catboy in Snow

by Gammarad



Category: The Instrumentality of Mankind - Cordwainer Smith
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Bigotry & Prejudice, Catboys, Corsetry, F/M, Far Future, Vice and Fen Bribe, star-crossed lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 01:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20301193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: In the time period between The Dead Lady of Clown Town and the Ballad of Lost C'Mell, relationships between humans and animal-people were forbidden. They happened anyway.This story is certified as "comprehensible if you don't know the canon" by one of the collection moderators who isn't the recipient who doesn't know the canon.





	Sad Catboy in Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowsapiens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsapiens/gifts).

> _People and underpeople had fallen in love many times before. The underpeople were always destroyed and the real people brainwashed. There were laws against that kind of thing._  

> 
> \- Cordwainer Smith, _The Ballad of Lost C'Mell_

He was supposed to be destroyed. A hominid had fallen in love with him, a real human being, and there were laws against that. The bird-mind police robot had taken her away to be brainwashed and forget she ever knew a catboy named C'Wallace. 

If not for the eagle-girl, E-Linsey, he would have died. Run away and hid he did, under the house he had lived in with lovely Trillion-eleventeen, his human being, who soon would not remember his existence. Her mind would be burned clean of the taint of love for an underperson. The laws would change, someday, out of respect for the courage and compassion of a man and a catgirl yet to be born, but in this time and world underpeople were still half citizens. 

It was more important to stop bestiality than protect their lives. For homunculi who couldn't even fail elementary school classes without being sent to their deaths, love had to be a luxury they kept for their parents, their babies if they had them, the mates they found of their own species and shape if they were able. 

It kept happening, though. And C'Wallace was only the latest. He cowered in a hidey hole under Trillion-eleventeen's house, wearing nothing but a robe over a corset, completely out of style and catering to his lover's tastes. The bird-mind police robot had arrived when they were in the middle of a tender moment. There was no time to put on proper clothing before he made his desperate escape.

Instinct told him, ages-old feline instinct, to stay perfectly still until the danger had passed. It also told him to curl into a ball to conserve warmth, but the human-like body he'd been shaped into couldn't curl quite tightly enough. He did at least still have a tail to wrap around himself for a tiny bit more warmth. It was a fluffy tail. 

E-Linsey sent thoughts to him of rescue, of taking him to a secret place where he would be safe, but he was far too frightened to listen. She couldn't go herself.

So she sent the mice. 

They were afraid of the cat -- but they knew he was just as afraid of them, so they gathered their courage and approached. Mouse-mind guard robots with the livery of a Lord of the Instrumentality, that E-Linsey had taken a post in the household of, that she under-cover secretly worked to convince of what the underpeople needed. A generations long plan that her grandchildren might see come to fruition, that her grandparents had seen the beginnings of as children. 

She sent the thought again, to go with the mice -- that they would bring him to safety. And by this time, C'Wallace was so cold and so hungry that he agreed.

He stepped out and the mice wrapped him in an enormous roll of tape. They carried him like this, completely anonymous, to the old thought-shelter in the back of Zytee Mountain. 

While he was inside, E-Linsey could not contact him by mind. C'Wallace relaxed and found there were two young cat-children already inside, playing a game he had not seen anyone play since his own kittenhood. They tossed a ring between them, catching it midair and throwing it back again. 

For a short time he forgot Trillion-eleventeen, forgot the bird-police and his own imminent death, and enjoyed watching the kittens playing. Then a rabbit-girl came and sat next to him. "You're new," she said.

"I won't be here for long," he told her. 

"None of us will be," she said sadly. "They'll find us and kill us all soon."

"Even children?" He didn't think they did that anymore. Not since the first Lord Jestocost had announced the Joan proclamation and made underpeople half-citizens, able to own things and be paid for their work. 

"They failed school. They ran away, but they're not legal anymore. Like the rest of us."

"A hominid fell in love with me," C'Wallace admitted.

"I broke a vase," the rabbit said. "Worth more than I could pay for." 

It was too sad to stay with so many doomed companions, C'Wallace found, and after less than half a day he could no longer stand it. He left the shelter and called to E-Linsey with his thoughts to take him to see his love one last time.

She sent back that it wasn't safe and that Trillion-eleventeen had already forgotten C'Wallace anyway.

There must be a way, was C'Wallace's only remaining thought.

E-Linsey found a way, though it is not recorded how she managed it. She found out what planet Trillion-eleventeen was being sent to and arranged for C'Wallace to also be sent there. She suppressed his memory of his love for the hominid so that he would not be found out during travel. 

When he got there, there was always a chance they would meet again. That something would happen between them again. It was the closest to a happy ending she could give them.


End file.
